Mortgage Women Magazine - November 2015

As I travel around the world giving talks on how to have wellbeing at work, people often ask me where’s the best place to start when it comes to moving from a world of greyness towards a life that feels full of color again. As I reviewed study after study on wellbeing, interviewed many of the world’s leading researchers and experimented with applications for thousands of employees, there have been three big a-ha moments that shaped my equation to move from functioning to flourishing.

1ST A-HA MOMENT:
WELLBEING RATHER THAN HAPPINESS
SHOULD BE YOUR GOAL

My first a-ha moment came while I sitting in class with Professor Martin Seligman and he told us that he was replacing his theory of happiness with a theory of wellbeing instead.

You see I’d spent most of my life chasing happiness. I was sure this would be the magic ingredient that ensured all my hopes were realized. The problem was no matter what I seemed to try or how many happy experiences I collected, the feeling just never seemed to last. I needed something more robust.

Rather than happiness being the goal of life, Marty’s new theory proposed our goal should be to flourish individually and together and that wellbeing – in particular the pillars of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (often referred to as PERMA) – was the path to get there. Practically this created...

2ND A-HA MOMENT:
WELLBEING REQUIRES CONSISTENT
COMMITMENT AND EFFORT

Now I had the steps all figured out, surely flourishing would come easily. Well not quite.

My next a-ha moment came when I was reading the research of Professor Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina on different actions we can take to improve our wellbeing. Again and again her research touched on the importance of looking after our physical wellbeing, particularly through exercise and meditation.

Based on a growing body of evidence and my own
experiences, it became clear that eating well, exercis-
ing regularly, meditating daily and sleeping deeply were
the hygiene factors to ensure I had the energy to
consistently execute the five steps Marty gave me. So
I decided to create a guiding practice to keep me on
track:
Barb’s research also concluded that just like going
for one run or eating one piece of broccoli won’t
suddenly make us healthy, the same is true when it
comes to our general wellbeing. She advocates we
use the tested practices of positive psychology to
build life-expanding habits that little by little remake
our lives from the inside out. This gave me a second
guiding practice to consistently execute the five
steps:

3RD A-HA MOMENT:
WELLBEING NEEDS NOVELTY TO ENDURE

Now I had the steps for flourishing, the physical energy and the habits to make it happen and for a while everything was pretty fabulous. Except after several months went by, the changes I made just didn’t seem to be having the same impact they had when I started.

- Choose to eat well, move regularly, meditate daily and sleep deeply each day to ensure you have the energy to consistently flourish.

- Create small, busy-proof habits
throughout the day to keep your wellbeing on track. - Create some jolts of joy in your day - like spending
time in nature, listening to a favorite song, finding something to
laugh about - to speak heartfelt positive emotions and fuel your
resilience.

- Use your strengths - like creativity, bravery, - Embrace a learning mindset and challenge your fears to cultivate the grit you need to achieve what matters most.

- Make the time to genuinely connect with other people - by expressing gratitude, asking appreciative questions or showing kindness - and savor the feelings of warmth and trust that well up with others.